In news sure to rock the recreational Poohstick fraternity to its very core, we at Teeny Manolo have learned that the global championships of the beloved and highly competitive game of Poohsticks are in jeopardy.
Ever since Pooh tripped, lost grip of his fir cone on the bridge at the edge of the Forest and accidentally invented a game, poohsticks has been beloved by both young and old.
Eighty years on, this quintessentially British endeavour, in which participants drop sticks into a river from one side of a bridge to see whose emerges first on the other, attracts worldwide attention.
And no event has done more to export its simple charm than the annual World Poohsticks Championships, held on the Thames in Oxfordshire for the past quarter century…
‘It just cannot be lost. It is a much loved event locally, and it is known worldwide as one of those slightly quirky, fun, English things,’ said Liz Williamson, 33, president of Oxford Spires, who admits to spending her hen party playing poohsticks on the original AA Milne bridge in Ashdown Forest, East Sussex. ‘Once these things are lost, it is ever so hard to bring them back again,’ added Williamson, a GP and mother of a nine-month-old daughter who already has ‘a shelf full of Winnie-the-Pooh things’.
Sadly, the average age of the organizers is over 70 and they are finding that putting together such a high-profile and dangerous event is simply more than they can take on year after year. Fortunately, a group of mere sprogs (average age 40) has stepped up and volunteered to take over. After all, you can’t leave these things in the hands of mere grownups.
